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59 J. Legal Educ. 269 (2009-2010)
A Call for Blind Review: Student Edited Law Reviews and Bias

handle is hein.journals/jled59 and id is 273 raw text is: A Call for Blind Review:
Student Edited Law Reviews
and Bias
Jonathan Gingerich
A number of studies suggest that non-blind review of manuscripts submitted
to professional journals (including law journals) disadvantages female authors
relative to blind review. Studies also suggest that non-blind review encourages
professional journals (and particularly law journals) to make decisions about
manuscripts on the basis of letterhead prestige rather than article quality, which
can make it difficult for younger scholars to publish their work even when it is
quite good. There are some costs to adopting a blind review policy, including
the administrative costs of ensuring that an article is appropriately blinded
before it is reviewed. But these costs are likely outweighed by the benefits
of adopting a blind review model, such as decreased reliance on letterhead
prestige, better perceptions of the journal's review process by potential
authors, and, theoretically, publication of higher quality articles. Therefore, I
recommend that student-run law reviews adopt the following policy:
We review submissions anonymously. We redact identifying information
from submissions to ensure that no editor who participates in making any
decision relating to whether a particular submission will be published knows
the author's name, affiliation, academic credentials, prior publications, or
pending publication offers. We request that authors submit manuscripts that
are suitable for blind review.
Methods of Article Selection by American Law Reviews
Presently, law students run most law journals in the United States. A few
journals are peer-reviewed faculty publications, and the number of such
journals seems to be growing gradually, but they remain an exception rather
Jonathan Gingerich is aJ.D. candidate, Harvard Law School. The author is the Managing Editor
of the Harvard Journal of Law and Gender, which has instituted a blind review policy that is
similar to the policy recommended here, and Executive Editor for Student Writing of the Harvard
Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, which has declined to adopt such a policy. He is also the
Managing Editor of the Jindal Global Law Review, which is a journal edited by American and
Indian law professors. This essay is based on a memorandum the author prepared for use by the
Harvard Journal of Law and Gender and the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own.

Journal of Legal Education, Volume 59, Number 2 (November 2oo9)

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